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Anri Sala <\/strong>
Ravel Ravel Unravel<\/em>, 2013,
installation view, French Pavilion, 55th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia.
Photo : \u00a9 Marc Domage, courtesy of Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
3. Exhibition as Exhibition<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\nToday, artists use a countless variety of mechanisms to present objects, mises-en-sc\u00e8ne<\/em>, and reconstructions\u200a\u2014\u200afor instance, Mark Dion\u2019s archaeological showcases, curiosity cabinets, and reconstructions of explorers\u2019 and scientists\u2019 laboratories; Laurent Grasso\u2019s Uraniborg<\/em>, inspired by period rooms; Marcel Dzama\u2019s dioramas; and Claudie Gagnon\u2019s tableaux vivants<\/em>, which literally \u201cperform\u201d historical works. In appropriating modes of presenting knowledge that were developed by museums, these examples all offer a look back at history. Recently, artists have reconsidered modernist models. This is the case, notably, for Luis Jacob, who, with Tableaux: Pictures at an Exhibition<\/em> (2010), presented a mise en ab\u00eeme<\/em>\u200a\u2014\u200aan exhibition within an exhibition\u200a\u2014\u200aby constructing a white cube in the industrial space of the Fonderie Darling, in Montr\u00e9al. The cube, which had one glass wall, offered all the conditions necessary for aesthetic contemplation: a carpet covered the floor, a neutral lighting system illuminated the room, and a bench placed right in the centre of the space encouraged the spectator to look at a series of twelve monochrome paintings hung on the white walls. Here, Jacob exposes the modernist tradition to its own visual device, to its own spectacle: on the one hand, monochrome painting; and on the other the white cube, which Brian O\u2019Doherty described as the central complement to the modernist painting\u200a\u2014\u200a\u201cunshadowed, white, clean, artificial.\u201d ^{5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 5 <\/a> - Brian O\u2019Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space<\/em>, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 15.<\/span> The painting and the exhibition are reduced to their simplest expression. The spectator is trapped within this mise en ab\u00eeme<\/em> and becomes, in turn, an object of aesthetic contemplation. The modern exhibition space thus becomes the site of a critical reflection on the conditions of the gaze. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Laurent Grasso<\/strong>
Uraniborg<\/em>, 2013,
installation view, Mus\u00e9e d\u2019art contemporain de Montr\u00e9al. \u00a9 Laurent Grasso \/ SODRAC (2015).
Photo : Guy L\u2019Heureux<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Luis Jacob<\/strong>
Tableaux vivants<\/em>, La Fonderie Darling, Montr\u00e9al, 2010.
Photo : Guy L\u2019Heureux<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Marcel Dzama<\/strong>
La Verdad Est\u00e1 Muerta<\/em> \/ Room Full of Liar<\/em>s, 2007.
Photo : courtesy of David Zwirner, New York\/London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
4. Collection as Exhibition<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Since the 1980s, museums have increasingly tended to abandon the development and display of their collections in favour of programming temporary \u201cblockbuster\u201d exhibitions that raise attendance numbers. A number of art historians and museologists claim that economic and political imperatives are causing museums to turn to the spectacular and event-based shows. Yet it is clear that this model doesn\u2019t always fulfil its objectives. Some museums have instead begun to update, sometimes radically, how they exhibit their collections. A great number of artists have performed interventions in collections since Andy Warhol led the way with Raid the Ice Box<\/em> (1969\u200a\u2013\u200a70) at the Rhode Island School of Art and Design. Other striking examples are Joseph Kosuth\u2019s The Play of the Unmentionable<\/em> (1990) at the Brooklyn Museum, and Fred Wilson\u2019s Mining the Museum<\/em> (1992) at the Maryland Historical Society. Artists propose a reorganization of collections that pays no attention to period, style, aesthetic issues, media, categories, or even proper names and the canons of art history. In doing so, are the museums involved trying to change their relationship with history and broaden the comprehension of art to encompass contemporary issues, including socio-political questions? Not only does this new redeployment of collections change our understanding of art and its place in history, it also transforms the museum and its potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In her short book Radical Museology, or, What\u2019s \u201cContemporary\u201d in Museums of Contemporary <\/em>Art?,^{6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 6 <\/a> - Claire Bishop, Radical Museology, or, What\u2019s \u201cContemporary\u201d in Museums of Contemporary Art? <\/em>(London: Koenig Books, 2013).<\/span> Claire Bishop cites the series of exhibitions that the Van Abbemuseum, in Eindhoven, grouped together under the title Play Van Abbe, between 2009 and 2011, as an exemplary case of radical museology. Focused on exhibitions and models of staging rather than on individual artworks, this program adopted an approach that enabled the museum to look back at its history. How was the museum positioned in history, aesthetically and politically? What stories had it told, and how? Among the different series of exhibitions mounted by the Van Abbemuseum, Time Machines<\/em> (2010) seems the most relevant to the present inventory. As Bishop notes, it reveals the institution\u2019s ambition to become a \u201cmuseum of museums\u201d or a \u201ccollection of collections.\u201d^{7<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 7 <\/a> - Ibid., 29\u200a\u2013\u200a35.<\/span> Every possible \u201cre-\u201d strategy was central to this project: re-exhibition, reconstruction, re-enactment. Without going into all the details of this complex program, some particularly striking examples are the presentation of archives from the exhibition Degenerate Art<\/em> (1937) and the reconstruction of artists\u2019 environments such as El Lissitzky\u2019s Proun Room<\/em> and Abstract Cabinet<\/em> (1927\u200a\u2013\u200a28). One of the series, titled \u201cThe Politics of Collecting\u200a\u2014\u200aThe Collecting of Politics,\u201d included one of the most hazardous projects produced by a museum in recent decades or, indeed, the last century: putting one of the collection\u2019s masterpieces (Pablo Picasso\u2019s Bust of a Woman<\/em>) on display in the heart of a conflict zone\u200a\u2014\u200ain Ramallah, in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. Proposed by the artist Khaled Hourani, director of the International Academy of Art Palestine, the exhibition Picasso in Palestine<\/em> (2011) is no doubt one of the most remarkable examples of radical museology imaginable not only because of the risks incurred by the museum, but also for its political, diplomatic, and military impact. <\/p>\n\n\n
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Play Van Abbe <\/strong>
Part 2: Time Machines<\/em>, 2010, installation view, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.
Photo : Peter Cox, courtesy of Archives Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
5. Exhibition as Reconstruction<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\nThe reconstruction or re-enactment of artworks, exhibitions, or display of a collection is currently being explored by artists, curators, and museums as a strategy for re-exhibiting artworks with ephemeral origins, but also for bringing history into the present.^{8<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 8 <\/a> - See, for instance, Elitza Dulguerova, \u201cL\u2019exp\u00e9rience et son double: Notes sur la reconstruction d\u2019expositions et la photographie,\u201d Interm\u00e9dialit\u00e9s: histoire et th\u00e9orie des arts, des lettres et des techniques<\/em>, no. 15 (spring 2010): 53\u200a\u2013\u200a71, accessed in \u00c9rudit, March 1, 2015, www.erudit.org\/revue\/im\/2010\/v\/n15\/044674ar.pdf; Reesa Greenberg, \u201c\u2018Remembering Exhibitions\u2019: From Point to Line to Web,\u201d Tate Papers<\/em>, no. 12 (October\u202f1, 2009), accessed March 1, 2015, www.tate.org.uk\/research\/publications\/tate-papers\/remembering-exhibitions-point-line-web; \u201cRe-enactment\u201d special section, esse<\/em>, no.\u202f79 (Autumn 2013): 2\u200a\u2013\u200a59.<\/span> Without wanting to trace their history (a subject that has not been studied until now), it is important to note that the first reconstructions by museums apparently go back to the 1960s\u200a\u2014\u200aeven though certain devices, such as period rooms, dioramas, and tableaux vivants<\/em>, may be considered historical restagings dating to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Van Abbemuseum was apparently the first institution, in the 1960s, to develop a program aimed at reconstructing artists\u2019 environments and experimental exhibition spaces. Under the direction of Jean Leering, the museum reconstructed Lissitzky\u2019s Proun Room<\/em> (1923\/1965) and L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Moholy-Nagy\u2019s Light-Space Modular<\/em> (1923\u200a\u2013\u200a30\/1970).^{9<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 9 <\/a> - We should note one of Claire Bishop\u2019s early attempts, described in, \u201cReconstruction Era: The Anachronic Time(s) of Installation Art,\u201d in When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969\/Venice 2013<\/em> (Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2013), 429\u200a\u2013\u200a50.<\/span> The artist Sophie B\u00e9lair Cl\u00e9ment became interested in this phenomenon by working on the reconstruction of reconstructions based on the archives of museums that, since the Van Abbe, have produced different versions of Lissitzky\u2019s Proun Room<\/em>. Her work traces the process through which the exhibition is made: first, she reconstructs the space but leaves it empty; then she displays one of Lissitzky\u2019s paintings from the collection of the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019art contemporain de Montr\u00e9al outside the gallery; and finally, she makes the documentation and correspondence with the museums\u2019 curators and archivists accessible. The title is a description of this process: Salle Proun: mur, bois, couleur, 1923<\/em> (1965\/1971\/2010). B\u00e9lair Cl\u00e9ment thus re-enacts the history of this artwork through its re-exhibitions.^{10<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 10 <\/a> - Jean Leering (director of the Van Abbemuseum from 1964 to 1973) made the first reconstruction for the exhibition of Lissitzky\u2019s works using a lithograph, a painting, a few photographs of the space, and one of the elements from the space (the only one that hadn\u2019t been destroyed after the Berlin exhibition). In 1970, Leering decided to create a second reconstruction because the work had been requested for loan to two exhibitions, one in Paris and the other at the Tate in London. This version, however, was never presented in the exhibition Art in Revolution <\/em>in London, because the USSR government refused to lend its works if Proun Room<\/em> was presented. In 1995, the first reconstruction was sold to the Berlinische Galerie\u200a\u2013\u200aLandesmuseum f\u00fcr Moderne Kunst, Fotografie und Architektur in Berlin by the Van Abbemuseum. The second is still in the Van Abbemuseum\u2019s collection. This information is available online at www.tate.org.uk\/research\/publications\/tate-papers\/replicas-and-reconstructions-twentieth-century-art.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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El Lissitzky<\/strong>
Proun Room<\/em>, 1923, installation view, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 1971.
Photo : Peter Cox, courtesy of Collection Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
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Sophie B\u00e9lair Cl\u00e9ment<\/strong>
Salle Proun : mur, bois, couleur,<\/em> 1923 (1965\/1971\/2010), 2011, installation view, Mus\u00e9e d\u2019art contemporain de Montr\u00e9al.
Photo : Richard-Max Tremblay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It was the controversial presentation of Marina Abramovi\u0107\u2019s Seven Easy Pieces<\/em> at the Guggenheim Museum in 2005 that drew the attention of critics and art historians to the scope and potential of reconstruction. This raises a series of questions concerning both the work in itself and the status of the exhibition and its author, and their place in art history, as is the case with the restaging of the cult exhibition by Harald Szeemann, When Attitudes Become Form: Berne 1969 \/Venise 2013<\/em>, at the Prada Foundation in Venice in 2013. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
An Immaterial Retrospective<\/em> invite \u00e0 r\u00e9fl\u00e9chir sur ce que sont une exposition r\u00e9trospective et une biennale internationale. Elle pr\u00e9sente autant des \u0153uvres iconiques que controvers\u00e9es, censur\u00e9es ou marginalis\u00e9es, sans prendre en consid\u00e9ration la dimension chronologique et les temps forts de cette biennale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
6. Exhibition as Performance<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Rirkrit Tiravanija\u2019s exhibition Une r\u00e9trospective (tomorrow is another fine day)<\/em> (2004\u200a\u2013\u200a05), presented at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam), the Serpentine Gallery (London), and the Couvent des Cordeliers by the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019art moderne de la Ville de Paris, offered an almost empty exhibition space. This first retrospective of the artist\u2019s work featured neither objects nor archives, but spaces in which some of his major works were described and played by \u201cactors.\u201d It was also the first time, to my knowledge, that curators tackled a retrospective for an artist whose relational and collaborative approach required a complete rethinking of the exhibition format. Here the curators had to consider the site\u2019s architecture, the spectator\u2019s engagement, the immaterial and performative dimension of many of the artworks, and the artist\u2019s participation at every stage of the process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Alexandra Pirici & Manuel Pelmus<\/strong>
An Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale<\/em>, Romanian Pavilion, 2013, reconstitution of The Last Riot<\/em> (AES + F), 2007, Russian Pavilion t (AES + F), 2007, 52nd International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale.
Photo : Eduard Constantin, courtesy of the artists <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Presented in the Romanian pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, in 2013, the exhibition An Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale<\/em>, by artists Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmus, is another example of a retrospective that was impossible to produce or even conceive of. The performance presented fragments of the history of the Venice Biennale in a completely empty space. The works of artists who had participated in the Biennale from its formation in 1895 through to its 2013 edition were presented by five \u201cperformers.\u201d For each work, an actor announced the title and the creator, as well as the year it was produced and the year it was presented at the Biennale. An Immaterial Retrospective<\/em> was an invitation to reflect on the nature of the retrospective exhibition and the international biennale. It presented works that were both iconic and controversial, censored, and marginalized, without taking into account the chronological dimension or the high points of the event. Among the hundred artists whose works were reconstructed immaterially were Picasso, whose painting Guernica<\/em> had been exhibited in the Spanish pavilion in 1976; Hans Haacke, in the German pavilion in 1993; Felix Gonzalez-Torres, in the American pavilion in 2007; Santiago Sierra, in the Spanish pavilion in 2003; as well as Joseph Beuys, Daniel Buren, Maurizio Cattelan, and Mona Hatoum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
7. Exhibition as Ecosystem<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
This seventh and last example may seem to diverge from the previous examples, but by bringing together objects, living beings, and organic matter it is the one that pushes the boundaries of the exhibition the most, in terms of the relationship between space and time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2013\u200a\u2013\u200a14, the Pompidou Centre presented Pierre Huyghe\u2019s first retrospective\u200a\u2014\u200aan artist who has been reflecting not only on the status of the artwork but also on the exhibition arrangement since the 1990s. Featuring some fifty works, Huyghe had conceived of the exhibition as an ecosystem\u200a\u2014\u200aa living space within the museum, in continuity with what had always fascinated him: \u201cConstructing situations that take place in reality.\u201d^{11<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 11 <\/a> - Emma Lavigne and Florencia Chernajovsky, \u201cPierre Huyghe,\u201d Centre Pompidou<\/em>, accessed March 1, 2015, www.centrepompidou.fr\/cpv\/resource\/c9nnKkx\/rB9r49.<\/span> The Pompidou Centre had been extended toward the exterior in order to create a space in which living artworks, organic and climatic, could exist in their own reality: bees, ice, water, fog. Inside, a white hare with pink paws wandered among the works and the visitors, and a colony of ants and spiders inhabited the site\u200a\u2014\u200adespite the risk that the presence of these denizens of the animal world held for the museum. In Huyghe\u2019s view, these beings \u201cbring into this space, designed to separate the living from fixed, something uncontrollable that isn\u2019t played. Animals have their writing, falsely random, and [he has] a greater and greater desire to exploit it.\u201d^{12<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 12 <\/a> - Ibid.<\/span> He reconfigures his works, creates organic relations among them, and places visitors in the middle of this ecosystem in transformation. The roles and the \u201cactors\u201d are interchangeable. The exhibition is a world-in-becoming: a situation that mingles with real life, has its own rules, is self-generating, and changes over time and in space according to a new rhythm. It is in constant evolution. Huyghe expresses the reversal that is produced within the very experiment that he proposes to us: \u201cIt\u2019s not a matter of showing something to someone so much as showing someone to something.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. I try to work the space like an organism: it is not so much the objects, the elements, but instead the flow, the interplay arising between the elements.\u201d ^{13<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 13 <\/a> - Ibid.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Pierre Huyghe <\/strong>
Pierre Huyghe<\/em>, 2014-2015, exhibition view, Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris. \u00a9 Pierre Huyghe \/ SODRAC (2015)
Photos : Ola Rindal & Pierre Huyghe (haut gauche), courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Translated from the French by K\u00e4the Roth<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n
Alexandra Pirici, Anri Sala, BGL, El Lissitzky, Laurent Grasso, Luis Jacob, Manuel Pelmus, Marcel Dzama, Marie Fraser, Pierre Huyghe, Play Van Abbe, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Sophie B\u00e9lair Cl\u00e9ment<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1303,"featured_media":4098,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281,882],"tags":[],"numeros":[4484],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[335],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[966],"artistes":[5831,2087,4098,5722,6080,5725,5833,5726,2772,5727,6541,3243],"thematiques":[],"type_post":[],"class_list":["post-144709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive","category-post","numeros-84-exhibitions","statuts-archive","auteurs-marie-fraser-en","artistes-alexandra-pirici-en","artistes-anri-sala-en","artistes-bgl-en","artistes-el-lissitzky-en","artistes-laurent-grasso-en","artistes-luis-jacob-en","artistes-manuel-pelmus-en","artistes-marcel-dzama-en","artistes-pierre-huyghe-en","artistes-play-van-abbe-en","artistes-rirkrit-tiravanija-en","artistes-sophie-belair-clement-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144709"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=144709"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=144709"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=144709"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=144709"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=144709"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=144709"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=144709"},{"taxonomy":"type_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_post?post=144709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}